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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

William and Mary Dyer
were citizens of Great Britain
who emigrated to New England in 1635 and co-founded the colony of Providence
Plantations and Rhode Island in 1638.
They were born during the reign of King Charles I, lived under Cromwell’s rule
in the 1640s and 1650s, and after Mary died in 1660, William lived during the
reign of Charles II.

“It’s only seven sleeps until Christmas Day!” was my dawn
chorus this morning. Tomorrow six, the next day five... My three children will
be practically exploding with excitement on Christmas Eve as they go to bed
full of anticipation for the wonderful day that lies ahead of them when they
wake up in the morning. Christmas Day is, for those that celebrate it, a day of
present exchanging, feasting and having fun. Imagine, then, if all of that was
taken away.

Charles I triple portrait, painted by Anthony Van Dyke

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms in seventeenth-century Britain were a
desperately unsettling time for the common people, as were the events that took
place before them. Charles I believed in his divine right to rule very
passionately, ruling without parliament for more than a decade. He also taxed
his people to breaking point; enforcing ship money in peacetime away from
coastal areas was one of his more unpopular moves. His poor rule over England and Scotland was one of the many
complex reasons civil war broke out between the crown and parliament in the
summer of 1642. At the same time, a form of Protestant Christianity known as
puritanism was on the rise. Puritans believed in the simplicity of faith. To
them, Christmas (among other celebrations) was an unnecessary Roman Catholic
tradition; they disapproved of celebrating the feast day, and the gluttony,
frivolity and excess that came with. In 1642, dedicated puritan soldiers and
members of parliament did not celebrate Christmas.

In 1643, the threat towards Christmas was more severe. The
parliamentarian leaders had signed a treaty with the Scottish in the autumn,
sealing themselves military support against the royalist army of Charles I. As
part of this treaty, parliament promised to further reform religion in England, bringing the faith of England closer to that of Scotland. The
Scottish had been practicing presbyterianism, another form of simple faith, as
their national religion for several decades. In the late sixteenth century
Christmas festivities had been stopped (save for a brief spell beginning in
1617 when James I reinstated them), and now England were expected to follow
suit.

“Love
one another: A Tub Lecture Preached” by John Taylor, warned that
Parliamentarian puritans were a threat to the celebration of Christmas
in January 1643.

The English puritans followed the Scottish Presbyterian
lead, treating Christmas Day in 1643 as a day like any other. Shops were opened
and church doors closed. Puritan members of parliament went to work at the
Houses of Parliament, leading where they expected subjects to follow. John
Taylor’s satirical pamphlet ‘Tub Lecture,’ published earlier that year, had
become a gloomy reality. Still, the civil war could have gone either way, and
Christmas wasn’t legally banned—yet.

In 1644, the non-celebration of Christmas became more
extreme again, as the feast day clashed with a puritan fast day. Members of
parliament favoured the fast over the feast; remembering their own sins as well
as the sins of their ancestors for indulging themselves during the twelve days
of Christmas. Parliamentary power was ever increasing by this time, and
Charles’ power slipping away.

Oliver Cromwell, successful soldier, parliamentarian and Puritan

Christmas 1645 was equally, if not more solemn than that of
the year before. In 1645, Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax had created their
New Model Army. Their army was structured, disciplined and puritan in the
extreme. In addition to these qualities the army was incredibly powerful, and
all but destroyed Charles’ royalist forces during two crucial battles—Naseby and Langport—that summer. Charles was captured and
handed over to the Parliamentarian army. Decisions were to be made about
Charles’ status now, but one thing was sure in the minds of parliament; they
had won the war. Charles would be their puppet ruler. Earlier in 1645,
parliament had issued their alternative to the Book of Common Prayer, ‘The New
Directory for the Worship of God’; the book did not mention Christmas at all.
With the king defeated, Christmas was gone. It was noted that man could walk
the streets on Christmas Day in 1645, and have no idea that it was a Holy feast
day.

John
Taylor published another pamphlet in 1652, titled “The Vindication of
Christmas,” supporting the continuing celebration of Christmas.

Still, England’s
Anglican subjects did not want to give up Christmas without a fight. John
Taylor published another pro-Christmas pamphlet, ‘Complaint of Christmas’,
persuading his fellow Christian men to continue celebrating Christmas in
defiance of parliament. This the people did, and more besides. On Christmas Day
1546 men celebrated as normal, and attacked local tradesmen who had opened
their shops for business as if it were a normal day.

June 1647 saw an act pass through parliament. Christmas was
now a banned celebration, and anyone caught celebrating could be lawfully
punished. This act was highly unpopular throughout the country, and sparked the
pro-Christmas riots that erupted all over the country on Christmas Day that
year. Holly was hung in blatant defiance of the new law. Shops that were open
for business were attacked and smashed to pieces and men were killed.

Shortly after Christmas Day in 1647, Charles I opened
communication with the Scottish to free himself from captivity and rule in his
own way again. This sparked a second English civil war between parliament and
crown; this time, however, the conflict was short lived and parliament enjoyed
a decisive victory the following August. Christmas 1648 passed with Charles
imprisoned and parliament in charge. In January 1649, Charles was tried, found
guilty and executed for high treason against his country. The war was over, and
Christmas was gone. The parliamentary ban of Christmas held fast, with Oliver
Cromwell continuing the law after he was named Lord Protector of England in
1653. Of course, just because Christmas was banned didn’t mean people didn’t
celebrate it. They just did so in secrecy.

Charles II: The king who brought back Christmas!

In September 1658, Oliver Cromwell died and was replaced as
Lord Protector by his son, Richard. (Interesting move for a man who was against
the hereditary monarchy, but that’s a moan for another day.) Richard was an
unsuccessful Lord Protector, and the people of England decided they wanted a
monarch after all. Charles II was recalled from exile and restored to the
throne in 1660. He brought with him the restoration of Christmas, which was a
hugely popular and successful move. Hurrah for Charles II! No wonder he was
such a popular king.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

This post was written for the Viriditas blog of Mary Sharratt, author of Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen, in a series on Light and Advent, December 2012. My article is an opinion piece on Light, not intended to tell the entire story or beliefs of Mary Barrett Dyer. The theological concepts are complicated and I've simplified them here.

Mary Dyer sculpture at Boston. Photo by Erik Pettee, used by permission.

If you know of Mary Barrett Dyer, perhaps it’s the memorial
statue at the Massachusetts State House; or that she was the Quaker woman
hanged in Boston
in 1660.

Mary was born in London
at the time the King James Bible was published, and was admired for her
intellectual, spiritual, and physical beauty. She and William Dyer were married
under Anglican liturgy at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, but in 1635, they emigrated
to ultra-Puritan Boston in Massachusetts Bay
Colony, and were immediately admitted to membership in the First Church.
(Some people committed suicide because their membership was denied.) The Dyers
had to conform to Puritan ways to be accepted so quickly. However, Governor
Winthrop observed that Mary was “addicted to revelations.”

Mary became a disciple of Anne Hutchinson, a religious
dissident who claimed that God revealed insights about scripture to her—a “weak-minded”
(but highly-educated) woman. She pointed out that instead of trying in vain to
earn salvation by perfectly keeping the law, believers were set free from
eternal damnation by God’s grace. They could trust divine leading in their
conscience, with no need for intercessors or interpreters.

But the Puritan theocracy believed if every man did as he
pleased, all would be anarchy. After several ecclesiastical trials, the
Hutchinsons and Dyers and about 75 Massachusetts
families were exiled for sedition and heresy. They purchased Rhode Island from the Indians, and founded a
new colony in 1638.

Mary visited England
in early 1652, where she observed several new religious movements, including
the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In some respects similarly to Anne
Hutchinson, the Friends believed that Old Testament laws were obsolete, and had
been replaced by God’s voice in the individual’s conscience, which was revealed
during times of silent reflection and worship. They experienced God as Light
and overwhelming Love, in contrast to the vengeful Judge who predestined only
certain people for eternal life. Some of the scripture they quoted included:

God is light; in him there is no
darkness at all. … If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have
fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us
from all sin.1 John 1:5-7.

Believe in the light while you have the
light, so that you may become children of light. ~Jesus. John 12:36.

“For you were once darkness, but now you
are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” Ephesians 5:8

In 1657, Mary returned to America,
was accused of being a Quaker, and was cast into Boston’s prison for weeks before William Dyer
learned of it and rescued her. Thus began three years of Mary’s repeatedly
defying religious oppression to gain relief and freedom for the violently
persecuted.

Quakers in New England were fined, beaten, branded, whipped
with a knotted cord, banished, tied to carts and dragged from town to town,
imprisoned without food or heat in winter, and banished “on pain of death” for
their efforts and beliefs. Those severe persecutions only made them more determined to share the Light.

For supporting Quakers, Mary was arrested and imprisoned at
least five times. Finally, she was sentenced to death.
She wrote a letter to the General Court on the night before her execution date.
“I therefore declare that in the fear, peace, and love of God I came … and have
found such favor in his sight as to offer up my life freely for his truth and
people’s sakes. If this life were freely granted by you, it would not avail me
to accept it from you, so long as I shall daily hear or see the suffering of my
dear brethren and sisters.”

Mary Dyer's handwriting: "Search with ye light of Christ in you..." Letter to the General Court, October 1659.

She believed that her death would be so shocking to the
public that it would bring about the end of the severe tortures and repression
of Quakers by the Puritan leaders. Many Puritans sympathized with and helped
Quakers, and had begun to turn away from their harsh government. Fearing unrest, the court granted a reprieve when she was on the gallows. She
was imprisoned in Plymouth two weeks later, spent
the winter at Long Island, then deliberately returned to Boston seven months later—to obey God’s
command, and commit civil disobedience by trespassing against her banishment order and providing aid to imprisoned Quakers.

She was again condemned to death, and was hanged on June 1,
1660. Because her vengeful former pastor offered a cloth to cover her
face, I believe that the Light was strong on her countenance.

Mary’s sacrifice was successful. Her letters were presented
posthumously to Charles II, who ended executions for religious offenses. Her
husband and close friends had significant influence on the 1663 Rhode Island royal charter
of liberties that granted freedom of conscience to worship (or not), and retained
separation of church and state. The charter was a model for the US
Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which has in turn been the beacon of light for
constitutions around the world.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

In 1630, the first ripples of the Great Migration brought
small convoys of ships from England
to Massachusetts Bay after ten to twelve arduous
weeks at sea, where they prevailed despite adverse winds and stale and
insect-infested food. These were the Winthop Fleet, named for their governor,
John Winthrop, and they had left families, farms, and inheritance to found a
New Jerusalem and usher in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

They fought winds and tides to sail south along the islands and
shoals of Maine to Cape Ann, to find the
Endecott party at Salem,
who had sailed there in 1628-29 and were supposed to have built houses and
planted crops for the 1630 emigrants. But what the Winthrop Fleet, who were
hungry and sick, found when they reached Salem,
was a village of miserable huts, its residents politely but alarmingly asking
if the new arrivals had any food to share. Half the Endecott party were dead or
dying, and now the Winthrop
party began to die of fevers or scurvy. When they arrived in early July, it was
too late to plow and plant for the autumn which came in August and the winter
which would come in early October. The fleet staggered into harbor between late
June and mid-August. Winthrop’s second son,
Henry, had drowned in a river almost immediately upon arriving in Massachusetts in early
July.

When a ship arrived safely at Cape Ann,
John Winthrop wrote in his journal on Thursday, August 8, 1630, “We kept a day
of thanksgiving in all the
plantations.”

On thanksgiving days, non-essential work and commerce was
prohibited, and families and servants were required to attend church services
for hours. It was a day for solemn, agonizing prayer and soul-searching to
discover hidden sin and confess it, so that God’s wrath would be appeased and
he would not withhold his blessing from his recalcitrant children.

Thanksgiving was not a feast day. It was a fast day. Thanksgiving
was a day of sorrow, to repent, to turn away from a sinful, rebellious life and
return to God’s grace. It wasn’t enough for an individual person to repent—they
were the Church, the body of Christ, and repentance and atonement were
important for the entire community. They didn’t conceive of “rugged American
individualism” at this time. They were wed to Christ and one another. Unmarried
people were not permitted to live alone—they were placed in families.
Wilderness pioneers were up to no good. In Plymouth Colony, a family tried to build
a farm out in the woods by themselves, but were brought back by court order to
live in community for the good of all. There would have been feast days, too, for celebrating weddings and births, and harvests. But because they weren't connected to the historical events that you'll see below, they didn't make it into John Winthrop's historical journal.

In 1630, the majority of the Winthrop Fleet arrivals stayed
in Massachusetts, though they couldn’t be
supported in Salem
as hoped: they needed fresh water. They scouted on foot, and planted the Dudley
group at Charlestown, and the Winthrop
group nearby at Boston.
Some of the intended colonists returned to England,
but the passengers faced piracy, broken masts, and even greater privation on
the way back to “Babylon,”
which was experiencing another wave of bubonic plague.

The ones who stayed in America lived in dugout shelters,
tents, and cabins that resembled stables—and this was during the Little Ice Age,
when they experienced severe winters with frozen bays. They had few stored provisions,
no grain, no vegetables or fruit. The Plymouth colony (the
Pilgrims) helped as they could, and the few Indians who hadn’t moved to their
winter camps traded bits of Indian corn and venison, and dried fish. This
season was the Starving Time.

On the 11th of February 1631, when “great drifts
of ice” floated in Boston Harbor, a sentry spotted the Lyon, one of the ships of the Massachusetts Bay Company, lying at
anchor nearby. The ship’s master had rushed home to England, filled up with
foodstuffs, and sailed back across the dangerous North Atlantic in winter
(almost unheard-of because of the severity of storms), to relieve the suffering
at the Bay.

John Winthrop wrote: “The poorer sort of people (who lay
long in tents, etc.) were much afflicted with the scurvy, and many died,
especially at Boston and Charlestown; but when this ship came and brought store
of juice of lemons, many recovered speedily. It hath been always observed here,
that such as fell into discontent, and lingered after their former conditions
in England,
fell into the scurvy and died.”

In other words, those who regretted leaving the comforts of Babylon for the
privations of New Jerusalem, were more prone to disease and death. Scurvy is a wasting disease
caused by lack of Vitamin C.

Winthrop’s
Journal, Feb. 22, 1631: “We held a day of
thanksgiving for this ship's arrival, by order from the governor and
council, directed to all the plantations.”

On Nov. 2, 1631, the Lyon
arrived again with important people, including the Winthrop family, Rev. John Wilson (who would
baptize the Dyers’ son Samuel in 1635 and revile Mary Dyer at her execution), Isaac
Robinson (son of the Pilgrim pastor, Rev. John Robinson), etc., and food to
last them the winter. On Nov. 11, Boston held a day of thanksgiving.

Many times throughout the 1630s and 1640s, Winthrop wrote of holding fast days and
thanksgivings. Ironically, when famine and disease came upon the Bostonians,
the governor, magistrates, and ministers would call a fast day to confess the
sins they and their neighbors must have committed to deserve all the disasters
which befell them.

Thursdays were the days when people were required to attend
church services for teaching, and when courts would schedule the punishment of
sex offenders, thieves, and (ahem) church members who neglected regular attendance,
with time in the stocks and/or public whipping. Mary Dyer’s first execution
date, October 27, 1659, was a Thursday. Her two Quaker friends were hanged; she
was reprieved. Then the people who had come to town for the “festival” went to
church, no doubt to hear sermons and lectures related to the just judgments of
God and the courts. Days of thanksgiving, called “public days,” were also set
for Thursdays.

In 1636 and 1637, Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies
had fought the Pequot War, which was less war than genocide and enslavement of
a Connecticut
tribe of Native Americans. Hundreds of Pequots were slaughtered and burned, and
Plymouth’s
governor, William Bradford, wrote this of one of the Indian villages :

“It was a fearful sight to see them
thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and
horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet
sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully
for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy
a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.”

So, back in Boston,
the theocratic council set June 15, 1637, as “a day of thanksgiving kept in all the churches for the victory
obtained against the Pequods, and for other mercies.”

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

In the early 1640s, seeing their estates shrinking fast in
the New World, the merchants of New Haven Colony formed a last-ditch
partnership to build and stock a trading ship that could bypass the large ports
(and of course fees) of Massachusetts Bay, and trade directly with England.

The tonnage of the ship was variously reported as 80, 100,
and 150 tons, and there are claims that it was built at Long Island, New Haven, or Newport.
(If it was built at Newport
as the Bostonian Cotton Mather wrote, the Puritans could blame the heretical,
godless Rhode Islanders for its faults!) The ship may have been built shoddily
or too hastily, because it was liable to roll over, according to its master,
Mr. George Lamberton, who “often said she would prove their grave.”

“The Shippe never went voyage before, &
was verye Cranckesided,” wrote Governor John Winthrop of Boston. "Crank-sided" means lop-sided or askew. Oh, dear! Imagine trying to stand upright, or the distribution of cargo weight.

In January 1646, the ship set out from New Haven, loaded with wheat, beaver pelts, hides,
and other goods valued at £5,000, which would be worth perhaps US$645,000
today. Because this was the coldest decade of the Little Ice Age, the ship’s
master had to break through three miles of harbor ice to get out to Long Island
Sound. There were about 70 people aboard the nameless ship. Part of the way,
they were accompanied by their ultra-conservative Puritan minister, Mr.
Davenport, who had close ties to Governor Winthrop, and who later became one of
Boston’s ministers and magistrates. (Rev. Davenport had come to Massachusetts in 1630 in the Winthrop Fleet.) Many friends, investors, and well-wishers
followed the ship to the harbor’s mouth, with prayers and tears, and heard Davenport pray,

“Lord, if
it be thy pleasure to bury these our friends in the bottom of the sea, they are
thine; save them!”

(Yes, Davenport
appears to have forgotten to take his happy pills that day.)

“Alas, the ship
was never after heard of! she foundered in the sea; and in her were lost, not
only the hopes of their future trade, but also the lives of several excellent
persons, as well as divers manuscripts of some great men in the country, sent
over for the service of the church, which were now buried in the ocean. The
fuller story of that grievous matter, let the reader with a just astonishment
accept from the pen of the reverend person [James Pierpont], who is now the
pastor of New-Haven.”

Those lost were the ship's commander George
Lamberton, (militia) Capt. Nathaniel Turner, "Thomas Gregson [my direct ancestor], Mrs.
Goodyear, and seven or eight figures of importance." Mrs. Goodyear was
the first wife of New Haven deputy governor Stephen Goodyear, who later
married the widow of George Lamberton! Many of the rest of the 70 people aboard would have been ship's crew.

The godly people of New
Haven, not hearing the fate of the passengers or their
investments after 18 months had elapsed, fasted and prayed that the Lord would
let them hear what he had done with them, and to prepare them to accept his
will. A great thunderstorm blew up one day in June, and an hour before sunset,
a ship of similar dimensions to the one which left in January appeared in the
sky over New Haven
harbor’s mouth and sailed into the north wind for half an hour. (Toward, not
away from, the thunderstorm, which makes its appearance more significant.)

Rev. James Pierpont wrote his eyewitness account of the
spectral ship.

“A great thunderstorm arose out of
the northwest; after which (the hemisphere being serene) about an hour before
sunset a ship of like dimensions with the aforesaid, with her canvass and
colours abroad (though the wind northerly) appeared in the air coming up from
our harbour's mouth, which lyes southward from the town, seemingly with her
sails filled under a fresh gale, holding her course north, and continuing under
observation, sailing against the wind for the space of half an hour.

“Many were drawn to behold this great work of God; yea, the very children cryed
out, There's a brave ship! At length, crowding up as far as there is usually
water sufficient for such a vessel, and so near some of the spectators, as that
they imagined a man might hurl a stone on board her, her main-top seemed to be
blown off, but left hanging in the shrouds; then her missen-top; then all her
masting seemed blown away by the board: quickly after the hulk brought unto a
careen, she overset, and so vanished into a smoky cloud, which in some time
dissipated, leaving, as everywhere else, a clear air. The admiring spectators
could distinguish the several colours of each part, the principal rigging, and
such proportions, as caused not only the generality of persons to say, This was
the mould of their ship, and thus was her tragick end: but Mr. Davenport also
in publick declared to this effect, That God had condescended, for the quieting
of their afflicted spirits, this extraordinary account of his sovereign
disposal of those for whom so many fervent prayers were made continually.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of the phantom ship,

A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,
Were heavy with good men's prayers.

"O Lord! if it be thy pleasure"---
Thus prayed the old divine---
"To bury our friends in the ocean,
Take them, for they are thine!"

But Master Lamberton muttered,
And under his breath said he,
This ship is so crank and walty
I fear our grave she will be!"

And the ships that came from England,
When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of this vessel
Nor of Master Lamberton.

This put the people to praying
That the Lord would let them hear
What in his greater wisdom
He had done with friends so dear.

And at last their prayers were answered:---
It was in the month of June,
An hour before the sunset
Of a windy afternoon,

When, steadily steering landward,
A ship was seen below,
And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
Who sailed so long ago.

On she came, with a cloud of canvas,
Right against the wind that blew,
Until the eye could distinguish
The faces of the crew.

Then fell her straining topmasts,
Hanging tangled in the shrouds,
And her sails were loosened and lifted,
And blown away like clouds.

And the masts, with all their rigging,
Fell slowly, one by one,
And the hulk dilated and vanished,
As a sea-mist in the sun!

And the people who saw this marvel
Each said unto his friend,
That this was the mould of their vessel,
And thus her tragic end.

And the pastor of the village
Gave thanks to God in prayer,
That, to quiet their troubled spirits,
He had sent this Ship of Air.

What do you think? Was it a cumulus cloud made colorful by the sunset? Was it a ship of lost spirits? Was it a
divine sign? Scores of serious and sober eyewitnesses thought it was the
latter. Hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues, comets, eclipses, and other natural
phenomena were always considered to be messages from God, to be interpreted by
their ministers.

Shipbuilding went on very successfully in New England, but
the principal building yards were in Massachusetts,
Maine, and at Newport,
not at New Haven.
Typically, a ship would be built, loaded with cargo, and sailed to Europe, where it was sold after only one or two voyages. America’s
shipyards built thousands of merchant and military ships during the 17th
century. But the phantom ship of New
Haven was never seen again.

New Haven’s
lost ship, carrying 70 souls and the hopes and fortunes of many more, was part
of the unmaking of the colony. In 1662, Charles II issued a charter (granting
rights of self-government) to Connecticut Colony, based in Hartford,
and the unchartered New Haven
merged with their neighbor.

*****

Christy K Robinson is the author of three books on William and Mary Dyer, which include many of their contemporaries: Anne Marbury Hutchinson, Edward Hutchinson, Katherine Scott, Henry Vane, John Winthrop, Jeremiah Clarke, John Cotton, and many others. You may find them at http://bit.ly/RobinsonAuthor .

Saturday, October 27, 2012

A Flemish wedding feast, perhaps between 1615 and 1630. Not a white bridal gown to be seen.

Mary Barrett and William
Dyer were married at St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in Westminster
(London), on
October 27, 1633. One year later, on their first anniversary, they buried
their newborn son at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. And on their 26th
wedding anniversary in 1659, Mary was taken to the gallows in Boston, Massachusetts, and stood there with a hanging rope
around her neck, prepared to die (but reprieved on that occasion).

According to legend passed down in Dyer descendants, the
dress that Mary wore for the wedding ceremony was made of white silk, with gold
and silver embroidery worked in insects and flowers (photo below).

A fragment of silk with (tarnished) silver thread, as well as colored silk embroidery,, said to have come from Mary Dyer's wedding dress.Photo: Lorcan Otway

Another claim is that Mary Dyer wore that wedding dress to
her execution on June 1, 1660, and that it was cut up to give as mementos or
relics to family and friends.

However-- Mary had wintered on Shelter Island,
then had skipped going home to Newport by
sailing straight to Providence, then walking 44 miles to Boston, determined that she should confront the authorities on their cruelty and if they wouldn't change the law, she was to hang and bring the greatest attention to her cause.
On one or two of the nights before she arrived and she would have been camping out or
sheltering roughly, there was a terrific lightning storm. Upon
arriving in Boston,
she was arrested, had her possessions confiscated, and was put in prison: not a
sterile environment, by any means, but rather, a dirt or mud floor crawling
with vermin. And really, what woman (in any century) would wear a wedding dress
to her own hanging, even if she hadn't traipsed through sea and muddy land, and
sat in prison for two weeks while wearing it? No, it doesn’t add up.

I've seen references to the wedding dress story, but I
wonder if it's a Victorian construct, like Mary’s invented royal genealogy and secret birth.
Perhaps the garment with this embroidery did belong to Mary and was her own
handiwork, but we'd never know for sure without fabric and dye analysis, we'd never
prove it belonged to Mary, and there’s no guarantee it was from a wedding
dress.

White wedding dresses didn't become fashionable until about 1840, more than 200 years after Mary's wedding. For
centuries, women wore their nicest go-to-meeting dresses to be married in, but unlike
today, they wore them again and again for other occasions. In Mary Dyer's time, the colors most
commonly used were deep reds and greens. Blue was the desirable color to
symbolize loyalty. The skirt for a wedding would have been split in front to
reveal another skirt beneath, perhaps in silk brocade.

This is an embroidered white jacket from 1615-20 England, with flowers,
insects, gold and silver thread, popular during Mary’s childhood years. But
once Henrietta Maria of France
became queen consort to England's Charles I in 1625, styles changed to a higher waist
with full, stuffed sleeves, making this stiff, fitted model less fashionable
and rather dated by 1633. Check out the description of the jacket at

In my novel, I've made a small nod to the legend, if that's
what it is, by having Mary embroider a bodice to go with a colored skirt.
Seamstresses often changed sleeves, collars, bodices, skirts, etc., by picking
out seams and reconstructing them in a new style, and embroidering or
embellishing with lace and ribbons, which would lend a reason for the rumor of
the gold bodkin (see below).

Lately, I've wondered if the scrap of fabric came from Mary Dyer, and was connected to a wedding, perhaps it belonged to Mary's mother and her wedding, which might have taken place between 1595 and 1608.

The groom in a wedding dressed colorfully, with knee
breeches and ribbon rosettes at his knees. He’d have worn a long waistcoat
(vest) of a rich fabric, over a white linen shirt, with a knee-length jacket
over all. There would have been plenty of lace at his neck and down the front,
and on his cuffs. In his large hat, he may have worn an ostrich feather. William Dyer was a milliner, which provided leather fashion accessories for men. He would certainly have worn fancy boots with turned-down top cuffs, and embroidered or beaded leather gloves.

Marriage and the Book of Common Prayer

Late September and all of October was a busy time for
weddings, because in the agrarian economy, the harvests were stored, and people
had a bit more time to leave the farm in the care of servants and visit in a
city for wedding festivities. The custom of the day was for the wedding to be
performed at or near the door of the church, using the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer, and to be
followed by a Communion/Eucharist service at the chancel.

(When Prince William and Catherine Middleton were married in
April 2011, I followed the words of the liturgy by reading the marriage service
in the 1549 BCP as the Archbishop of
Canterbury spoke it. Same words!)

An early 17th-century wedding, during the Elizabethan or King James I years,when Mary's parents married.

Puritans, on the other hand, often refused to be married in
churches, believing that marriage was not a sacrament (they recognized only
baptism and Eucharist/Communion), and that it was a civil union. In addition,
they wished to avoid the Anglican service performed from the BCP, seeing it as too closely-related to
Roman Catholic liturgy. Puritans of the early to mid 17th century
would often be wed by magistrates in taverns, homes, or places of business. The
fact that the Dyers were married in the church tells us that at that time, they
were following Anglican, not Puritan, tradition.

The ministers of St. Martin’s
were Dr. Thomas Mountford and William Bray, both of whom had strong ties to
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, so we can be sure that the Dyer wedding
would have been Anglican, through and through. St. Martin-in-the-Fields parish contained fine homes of
important government members. The house that William Dyer leased after living
in it during his apprenticeship was around the corner from Thames-side York
House and Durham House, large residences for important members of government. After the ceremony, there would have been a feast and drinking, with hired musicians, dancing (sarabande, bourree, jig, etc.), and perhaps games. There may have been a bride-cake. It was probably an expensive party, considering their business contacts, neighbors, and living in a posh area.

The wedding dress story is accompanied by a story that
Mary Dyer’s gold bodkin was also passed down to her descendants. A bodkin is a
tool with a blunt or rounded point that helps pull drawstrings or ribbons
through a casing (today, a strip of elastic for a skirt waistline). My bodkin looks like a safety pin on a 12-inch metal rod. A bodkin is not the same as an embroidery needle that a
seamstress would use to decorate cloth. An embroidery needle has a sharp tip,
and a long eye to accommodate the multiple threads or metallic wire. It’s quite
possible that Mary used a bodkin as she constructed clothing for her husband,
children, and servants.

If the story is true, and ifMary owned a gold bodkin, and if it was actually this one: a gold bodkin tells us that it was probably a
gift from a wealthy person, and that it came to her when she’d been
married (because of the D-for-Dyer stamp). Perhaps it was a wedding gift, or it came sometime after the 1633 marriage.

The Puritan laws of Massachusetts Bay from 1634 on, forbade women to wear gold and silver embroidery, lace, or silk scarves. If they disobeyed, they could receive the same penalties as men who were drunks, petty thieves, or domestic abusers: ten lashes of the multiple-strand whip and time in the stocks. On the other hand, they employed lace makers to keep their husbands looking spiffy.

Hmmm, the underlying conflict is not so different from laws men attempt to impose on women in the 21st century.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Sophie is digitally transported to Mary Dyer's statue in Philadelphia.

I remember once, when looking for information on how to make
Anne Boleyn-style French hoods, coming upon either the blog or the website of a
historical re-enactor, who took great pains to point out that she was not a
costumer; she was the real deal!

But we don't all have the time and means to be the real deal
and thus I proudly will admit myself to be a costumer – as long as it looks
sorta, kinda correct and nobody in the general public can tell otherwise, I'm a
happy camper.

Especially when I'm given less than two weeks to come up
with male and female “American colonial” costumes for my twin children. Each
also had to do a stand-up talk with one of those three-paneled “science fair”
type cardboard displays. My daughter wanted to do a famous person, but didn't
like any of the options that were available to her. (What the teacher meant by
“American colonial” was Revolutionary late 18th-century, whereas Mary Dyer lived in the
mid-17th century.) Remembering
Christy's research into Mary Barrett Dyer, I proposed Mary as a
candidate and, after I supplied some information, my daughter's teacher
agreed.

I didn't have much time and I didn't want to spend a lot of
money. Basically, under such circumstances, you have three choices:

•Buy a
really cheap pre-made costume at a place like Party City (cheap quality but
expensive).

•Buy a
pattern, fabric, and make it yourself (expensive and expensive).

•Wing it (see
below).

Winging it

This can be either totally flying
by the seat of your pants or by poring over numerous books on period costume
that you might not have on hand (I didn't). Therefore, I went by the two images
on Christy's website and decided to start with the bonnet and skirt (and maybe
apron?) as shown on the Boston statue of Mary Dyer. The important thing in winging it, especially
if you are not an experienced seamstress, is to 1) simplify, simplify,
simplify! And, 2) use really cheap materials wherever possible.

Coif Materials:

•Millinery
tape

•Cheap
white sheet

•Double-edge
binding tape

•Fray-Check/Stitch
Witchery (optional)

Before trotting off to your local
fabric store to find the millinery tape, which was traditionally used by
haberdasheries, you should be forewarned that they probably won't know what you
are talking about. That's okay; ask them to direct you to their drapery
department. It's a 3” wide almost grosgrain “drapery” tape. I measured (well, actually,
couldn't find my measuring tape, so I just held the tape up and around the top
of her head to the desired length) the proper length of drapery tape and cut. You'll
probably want to hem that edge or use one of the iron-on hemming
products/anti-fray products so that the cut end doesn't fray.

Secondly, buy the cheapest (choice of color) sheet you can find at Wal-Mart or
other store in a twin bed size. Cut a circular-shaped piece of the sheet such
that it's a little shorter than the millinery tape piece (to get a
reasonably-shaped circle, fold the sheet vertically and then again just a
little bit horizontally and cut a ¼ circle). Fold under into a straight line
the portion of the circle that will fit along the top/back of the millinery
tape. Dashed lines represent fold lines.

This should result in something like the following:

First pin the straight-edge onto itself, then hem the
semi-circular portion (or use the non-sewing hemming products). Sew the
straight-edge to the center of the length of the millinery tape, right-edges
facing each other (meaning you'll be sewing on the wrong side). Decide how long
you want the under-the-chin tie strips and cut two from the bias tape. Sew them
to the under-side of the millinery tape up near the ears and where the
semi-circular piece meets the millinery tape. Gather the edges of the
semi-circular at the bottom to create a “pouf.”

The reason for using a sheet is
simple: it's about the cheapest form of fabric you can buy! This means you can
afford to experiment and toss anything that doesn't work out. Even after
discarding a few circles and making the apron, I had plenty of white fabric
left over. This coif/bonnet simply involved measuring lengths and circle sizes,
cutting them and sewing them. Easy-peasy!

Above you can see the finished product, both by itself as
well as on my daughter; the pouf holds in her hair for modesty's sake.

Skirt Materials &
Construction

•Twin sheet
of desired skirt (and blouse) color

•Elastic
ribbon or banding.

•Iron-on
hem product and/or Fray Check

•Set of
hemostats OR a large, well-made safety pin. Mary Dyer would call it a "bodkin."

Here is where the additional benefits of using sheets really
kicks in. The first reason I gave was that it is about the cheapest fabric you
can buy. Now, let's imagine that, somehow, in a mysterious parallel universe,
you could afford to buy fabric the size of a twin sheet for the same amount of
money as buying the sheet. Yes, but... that same piece of fabric would have two
selvage edges (which wouldn't need to be hemmed and two cut edges, which would
need to be hemmed. With a sheet, you have four hemmed edges! Cuts down your
work considerably, especially in making the skirt and apron.

For the skirt, measure how long you'd like for the skirt to
be, then add 2” or so and cut that sheet horizontally at that mark.If you use the entire width of the sheet, you
now have a hemmed bottom and two hemmed sides!

Now you need to make an upper-casing along the cut line. The
purpose of the casing – which is essentially a hemmed-off channel at the top of
the skirt – is to carry the elastic ribbon which will make the skirt puffy and
easy to pull on over the hips. The casing is the reason for adding the extra 2”
at the top of the skirt. You have three options here: FrayCheck the rough top
edge, then fold over by an inch and hem; Fold under the rough edge by 1/8” and
then by nearly an inch and hem; Hem the 1/8 edge, fold again by about an inch
and hem. Remember that “hemming” means using either a StitchWitchery-type of
product OR sewing. Stretch the elastic tape a bit to a comfortable size for the
wearer of the costume and cut that amount.

Now sew the two side edges together up to the line of the casing hem. Attach
either the hemostats OR the safety pin to one end of the elastic tape/ribbon
and gradually begin inserting it int one end of the casing. Don't allow the other end to be drawn into the
casing! Stretch it and gather the casing until both ends exit just beyond the
casing's sides. Here you can either sew them together or tie them shut. Now you
can stitch shut the two ends of the casing, hiding the elastic inside of them.

Congratulations! You now have a skirt! Do likewise for the
apron (for which I used my white sheet instead of the gray that I used for the
skirt), only make the casing a separate sewn rectangle and, pinning right side
to right side (with wrong side facing the sewer), sew the separate “casing” which
we will now call an “apron string” and use it to tie the apron around the
waist.

My sewing machine died before I could make a blouse out of the matching gray
colored sheet (regrettably, only after I'd freehanded the blouse pattern), so I
went with one of Sophie's white cotton karate gi tops. You can see the final
results below:

Yes, I made portions of her brother's costume, as well.

.

_______________Judy Perry is a university educator in computer science, and is author of a blog on Katherine Swynford. She and her family live in southern California.
_______________Thank you, Judy, for documenting your DIY project on Mary Dyer, and
sharing your resourcefulness with desperate moms everywhere, trying to
come up with a project for their children!

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Although we regularly hear people (commentators,
politicians, citizens) refer with pride to our Founding Fathers, it’s unclear
whether they’re familiar with the relevant dates. Because if they had done the
arithmetic, they surely would’ve noticed that every one of these illustrious
“founders” had been born more than a century after this country was already
formed.

Jamestown, the first
permanent English settlement in America,
was established in 1607, and Plymouth,
the second settlement, was established in 1620. By contrast, George Washington
was born in 1732, John Adams in 1735, Thomas Jefferson in 1743, and James
Madison in 1751.

Technically, these men didn’t “found” us. What they did was
engineer our independence from England
and invent our federal government, two magnificent achievements that set us on
the successful course we’ve followed ever since. But let’s be clear: This country’s ethos—its customs, social
rituals, religious beliefs, rural economy, national character—had been in place
for a 150 years (that’s six generations) before Jefferson, Madison, et al,
ever hung out their shingles.

We were taught in school that the Pilgrims came to America
in order to practice “religious freedom.” While that statement is more or less
accurate, what they fail to mention is that the Puritans were 17th-century
England’s
version of the Taliban. These religious zealots wanted to “purify” Christianity
(hence “Puritans”) in much the same way that the Taliban wants to purify Islam.

Indeed, if we wished to be brutally honest, we could say
that America
was founded by a bunch of religious fanatics, and that it was the framers of
the Constitution (educated products of the Enlightenment) who, bless their
hearts, saved us from them.

How fanatical were they? Fanatical enough, in 1660, to
execute the first female in the colonies. Her name was Mary Dyer. She, along with three male associates [Robinson,
Stevenson, Leddra], were hanged by Massachusetts Bay Colony authorities. Dyer
and the men had repeatedly ignored warnings not to set foot in Massachusetts, where
Quakerism was outlawed, and when the warnings went unheeded, the Colony hanged
them.

One can think of many religious people who deserve to be
hanged, but Quakers aren’t among them. In fact, Quakerism, with its pacifism
and equality for women, seems like one of the more enlightened, dignified
religions. But in 1660, the good citizens of Massachusetts chose to kill a group of
settlers whose only crime was belonging to another faith and defying the
orthodox theocracy. And they killed them in the name of Jesus Christ.

As far as theology goes, our neighbors to the north are, by
all accounts, nowhere near as demonstrably religious as we are. A few years
ago, I saw Kim Campbell (former Prime Minister of Canada) on Bill Maher’s HBO
television show. The panel was discussing the comparative role that religion
played in the politics of Canada
and America.

Reminded of the fact that George W. Bush had declared, after
announcing his candidacy, that he believed God wanted him to run for president,
Campbell
observed that if a Canadian politician had said the same thing, people would
think he was “mentally ill.” And as many will recall, during the 2008
Republican primary, three candidates (Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback and Mike
Huckabee) proudly admitted that they didn’t believe in evolution.

Our history is filled with paradoxes. We embrace founders
who didn’t actually “found” us, we applaud the Pilgrims for seeking religious
freedom when, in fact, they were vehemently intolerant, and we assume we were
established as a reverently Christian, God-fearing nation even though the
framers took careful steps to ensure that we would never become a theocracy.

In this post-New Deal, post-industrial milieu we find
ourselves, we have both kinds of voters: the kind who vote for candidates on
the basis of their positions on specific issues (health care, tax reform, trade
policy, etc.), and the kind who ignore the boring nuts-and-bolts stuff and
simply vote for the candidate they regard as the “most religious.”

And when the Tea Party says that they “want their country
back,” and evangelicals say that we will never again be the nation we once were
until “we put Jesus Christ back into our lives,” we’re reminded of not only how
polarized we are, but of how the ghost of Mary Dyer—the first woman in Colonial
America to be executed for civil disobedience—still haunts us.

Friday, September 14, 2012

This article, second in a series on strong-willed women that includes Mary Dyer, is found at Jo Ann Butler's Rebel Puritan blog. She asked why I chose to write this blog and a book trilogy on Mary Dyer and her world.

Historical fiction has been my favorite literary genre since
I was a young girl. I’ve learned that several of my author friends read my
favorite book series on the Childhoods
of Famous Americans when we were kids, and it shaped our discovery of
history and historical fiction by humanizing icons of history and making them
accessible to children. It tickled our imaginations to learn about culture and
what life might have been like for Virginia Dare, Martha Washington, or Abigail
Adams, as children. (There were boys in the series, too, of course.)

The author's pedigree chart, begun in 1974 and printed in 1994.

My mother was chronically ill, and she drafted me to help her
at genealogy and history archives with the fetch-and-carry jobs, or searching
the reference files (you know, the little card drawers at the book place, that
preceded the search engine). We traced many of our lines back through
renaissance and medieval eras to European royalty. One of our most important
discoveries in the early 1970s was the confirmation that we were 11 and 12
generations descended from Mary Barrett Dyer, the 17th-century Quaker martyr.
In the 1970s and 80s, we believed that Mary was hanged by those mean Boston
Puritans for her religious beliefs, “simply for being a Quaker.” Unfortunately,
that belief persists in countless web pages today.

Mary Dyer had several opportunities to avoid prison and
execution. She could have lived her life in peace and safety, doing anything
she wanted to, in Rhode Island,
the colony she co-founded. But she intentionally returned to Boston several times to defy her
banishment-on-pain-of-death sentence, until she forced their hand and they
executed her. It’s not that she wanted to die, but that she was willing to die to shock the citizens into stopping their
leaders from the vicious persecution of Quakers and Baptists. Whippings such as
Herodias Gardner’s. Mary and other Quakers believed they were called by God to
“try the bloody law,” the law that required torture, bankrupting fines, exile,
and death for dissenters.

Mary’s sacrifice and civil disobedience worked. After her death
in June 1660, a petition to King Charles II resulted in a cease-and-desist
order to the Puritan theocracy in New England; and the king’s Rhode Island charter of 1663 (which replaced
previous religiously-liberal charters) specifically granted liberty of
conscience and separation of church and civil powers in Rhode Island Colony.
One hundred thirty years later, the religious-freedom concept modeled by Rhode Island became part of America’s Bill of Rights to the
Constitution.

1663 Rhode Island charter, written by Rhode Islanderssuch as John Clarke, Roger Williams, and William Dyer,and granted by King Charles II.

Religious liberties (to practice religion or not without
interference of the government) and those who would legislate their morality
upon others still clash today, 350 years later. That’s one of the things that
compels me to write of a strong-willed woman. Mary Dyer sacrificed her will and
her life of ease and wealth, with husband, children, grandchildren, respect and
influence for the good of hundreds of people in her own time, and untold
hundreds of millions who came after her.

The genealogy hobby is inspiring, educational, and fun. I’m
32 generations down the tree from Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor’s son John was
forced to agree to the Magna Carta, a charter of liberties which has been the
model of constitutions around the world. On another line, I’m 12 generations
down from Mary Barrett Dyer, whose sacrifice laid the groundwork for the human
rights in the US Constitution. There are numerous other figures who may not be
famous today, but who shaped our society nonetheless. It’s fun to speculate
what molecules of DNA have come down to me, or from the thousands of other
strong, resourceful, and intelligent women in the family pedigree. They’re the
people whose actions and principles formed our society and culture today. They
were not wimps. And neither are we.

*************** Author/blogger/friend (not necessarily in that order) Jo Ann Butler releases book two of her trilogy on Herodias Long Hicks Gardner Porter in autumn 2012. "Herod" or "Harwood," as Jo Ann's heroine is known, was a neighbor of the Dyers in Newport, Rhode Island, beginning in the early 1640s.

William Dyer's 1643 memo regarding Herodias and her husband John Hicks' domestic violence.
“Memo John Hicks of Nuport was bound to ye pease
by ye Govr & Mr Easton in a bond of £10
for beating his wife Harwood Hicks
and prsented [at this] court was ordered to continue
in his bond till ye next C[ourt] upon which his wife
to come & give evidence concerning ye case”

William Dyer recorded legal documents about Herodias' first marriage, and did business with and served in government with Herod's husbands. It's highly likely that Herodias and Mary Dyer were friends as well as neighbors, because Herodias, like Mary, protested the Puritan persecution of Quakers. Herodias, holding her unweaned baby, was stripped to the waist in public, and whipped with a knotted lash, as punishment for her support for Quakers and dissidence against the Puritan theocratic authority. She was then imprisoned for two weeks in Boston, so you can imagine that her wounds may have become infected and healed badly.

For more information on Herodias Long, and to order the book, visit the Rebel Puritan website.
Images courtesy of Jo Ann Butler.

The DYER books make great gifts!

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About Me

Christy is an author and editor whose biographical novels and nonfiction book on William and Mary Dyer were published in 2013 and 2014. Her hardcover book "We Shall Be Changed" (2010 Review & Herald) is also available. In September 2015 she published "Effigy Hunter," a nonfiction history and travel guide, and will follow that with a nonfiction book on Anne Hutchinson, then a historical novel set in England in the 1640s-1660s.